


Beauty From Ashes

by Loki_Friggasson



Category: Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Angst and Feels, Ashes Scene in Avengers: Infinity War Part 1, Avengers Feels, Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie) Spoilers, Bucky Barnes Feels, Bucky Barnes/Steve Rogers Feels, Feels, Gen, Marvel Universe, Steve Rogers Feels, Tragedy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-26
Updated: 2018-07-26
Packaged: 2019-06-16 09:46:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,428
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15434322
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Loki_Friggasson/pseuds/Loki_Friggasson
Summary: The dreadful, fatal moments immediately preceding, and following, Thanos' Gauntlet Snap, from Bucky Barnes' POV.





	Beauty From Ashes

**Author's Note:**

> All my thanks and appreciation to Marvel, to Kevin Feige and to the Russo Brothers, who created such a powerful, profound, emotionally draining, incredibly satisfying, devastating, heartbreaking, triumphant and tragic masterpiece of a film....purest perfection in its every frame, and truly inspiring for that....!
> 
> Thanks also go to my dear pal Alexis Harvey who inspired me to do this in the first place....she who put the idea in my head, though it was such exquisite agony for me even to consider it, such that I *knew* I couldn't rest until I did the thing. <3

Bucky was recovering first from being hurled through the air by Thanos, then from the energy shockwave which blasted through the jungle and which left him rattled and reeling.  He was deeply pissed off, scared, and he was feeling all of his hundred and one years on this earth.  Swearing under his breath, he jumped up and grabbed his gun (okay, it was Natasha's, but he'd get it back to her).  He was instantly on the lookout for Steve.  His gut told him that the punk was doing something stupid and suicidal without Bucky there at his six.

Clutching the 249 Saw like his lifeline, he charged through the trees.  He avoided thinking about how scared he really was, or how this was all so fucked-up insane.  All this war, blood, and death...would it ever end for him?  Backtracking hastily, he had to steel himself against another mysterious energy wave when it rolled through the trees.  Moments later he heard someone screaming horribly - like their heart was ripped out - like this was the end of the world.  It sounded like the girl, the witch - Wanda.  It was **terrifying**.

Another shockwave tore through the jungle; it bent the trees nearly in half and it bounced him off of a boulder.  His ears rang and his spine ached; for a split second he thought the entire world had flashed brilliant, blinding white.  He couldn't guess what the hell was happening; it could only be Thanos, and it sounded catastrophic anyway.  He was still standing, though, and the world was still here...so maybe there was a chance that they'd win?  Goddamn it, though, _where the hell was Steve??_   Bucky willed himself to keep moving.  He dared not wonder what chance he could possibly stand against a Titan.  What could he do that a witch or a real-life lightning-powered Norse god couldn't?  Still, he had to do **something** ; it might be a suicide mission, but those were all he ever knew.

All around him the jungle was suddenly quiet.  Too quiet.  Even the leaves had ceased rustling and nary a breeze ruffled his hair.  It was eerie as fuck.  He warily glanced at the leafy canopy; the sky was clear and the day was warm, yet, an uneasy chill crinkled his spine.  **Something** had happened...something really not good.

His gut churned. His skin was tingling from so much weird energy in the air; his flesh prickled and itched like bugs had burrowed underneath it. Yet he shook it off, and continued, chalking it all up to fear or nerves. He was hastening to the clearing where he'd last seen Steve when he was hit by a wave of something worse than nausea. His limbs went weak and shivery, and he staggered. He stumbled, feeling that he was being pulled from a thousand different directions; he jerked and twisted but the feeling didn't stop.

He stepped through the trees and into a sickening feeling that everything was hideously wrong.  He knew that he was holding the gun - his right hand was on the stock - but suddenly he could not feel his fingers.  He knew that he was walking through the jungle, placing one foot ahead of the other...but if he wasn't looking, he wouldn't have.  _What is this?  What's happening to me?_

He blinked through a strange, terrifying haze; the world was slipping out of focus and he didn't know why.  It was like he was being stretched thin, and tearing from the inside; something like that should hurt like hell, but it didn't.  It didn't feel like **anything**.  He was broken glass shot through with ten thousand cracks.

Twenty feet away at last he saw Steve standing in the clearing.  He seemed confused about what the hell had just happened; he was bruised and bloody, but whole.  Thor was there, too, looking stunned.  There was no sign of Thanos.  Bucky unsteadily stepped closer, wondering why the ground was crumbling underfoot.  Dizzy, wavering, he looked at his vibranium hand...and then he realized that it wasn't the earth at all.  Shocked, confused, he blinked at his sleek and beautiful work-of-art vibranium arm as it dissolved into charred, brownish ashes floating away.  He was so cold now...worse than the ice, worse than cryo.

Bucky desperately struggled forward, though he couldn't feel himself moving.  Steve was so close, he had to make it...  _This can't happen, not like this, please don't take me - I'm not ready to go-_   He was slipping, panicked and terrified, as he staggered closer.  Steve was the centre of his universe, all that ever mattered; always Steve...only ever Steve.

His vibranium arm vanished past the elbow.  He forced his mouth to move.  "...Steve...?"  His voice was lost and confused, even frail.  _I don't feel good,_ he tried to say, but his throat wouldn't work.  He couldn't comprehend what was happening.  If they had lost, was this it?  But - he didn't want to die - there was still so much that he - that **they** \- had to-  He'd been made a whole, healed man, and he'd only been waiting for the right moment...he'd always thought that there would be more **time**...  _God, please no, don't take me - I need him, I have to tell him - I don't wanna go..._

His consciousness was fracturing, his vision rapidly tunneling to black.  In less than the time for his lungs to inhale once more, he tried to beg and plead, _Steve, what's happening - what is this - don't let me go!_   But his voice was gone.  _Don't make me leave him, I just got him back, **I just got myself back**!_ he tried, and failed, to scream.  For less than the span of a heartbeat, his gaze locked with Steve's.  Steve, whose eyes were huge and afraid.  Time slipped and Bucky saw a skinny Brooklyn punk with bright eyes and a big smile and the softest, warmest hands...someone so brave, and fierce, and better by far than anyone else.  _Always his li'l Stevie..._

His limbs were crumbling.  He felt insubstantial, floating away piece by piece...like he was already gone.  His sense of time distorted so that these moments seemed to stretch forever, yet never nearly long enough.  He peered into Steve's face and he struggled to cry, _I'm so sorry, I don't wanna die, don't let me die!_   But he couldn't.

His arm was dust on the wind.  His legs cracked apart and he was sinking, falling forward.  He was fighting for every step, every breath, which he did not have.  He stared ahead blindly, uncomprehending; the rest of his world was lifeless grey shading toward oblivion, but **Steve** was the brightest, most real thing that he had left.  If this was death, then maybe Steve was the angel who would get him to heaven.  Desperately, vainly, Bucky struggled to reach him.  His other hand dissolved into a fine plume of dust; his fingertips were flakes of ash, light as burnt parchment.  There was nothing holding him together now - nothing keeping him here.  His hand disintegrated to the wrist and the 249 Saw fell to the ground.  _No - I can't - I have to - it's hers - I **remember** -_

Bucky tried so hard to hold onto consciousness and reality.  To his life.  Names, places, it all went up in smoke.  When a hunk of driftwood is left in the flames, it becomes a blackened, empty husk; with nothing to hold it together, it crumbles to ash at a touch, or under a passing breeze.  **He** was now that cindered husk, and the invisible strings binding him together were fraying.  He struggled to see Steve clearly even as his vision faded to nothingness.  Maybe Steve was reaching out, or calling to him, or screaming - but Bucky never heard it.  His senses crumbled into the dirt with the rest of him.  He pitched forward helplessly, his gaze still locked with Steve's.

He crumbled first to his knees in a billowing ash cloud.  His frantic, panicked heart beat only once more.  He sucked in a last, desperate breath, in that fraction of a millisecond before his chest disintegrated.  His vision smoked to darkness so that Steve was the last thing that he would ever know in this world.  His first, his last, his best and his only.  _Steve, I love you, I've always l-_

He toppled face-first into the dirt and everything went black.  And then, there was nothing.  His body dissolved in a violent plume of dust.

In the ensuing, dreadful quiet, a handful of ashes drifted and fluttered under the Wakandan sun.


End file.
